Facing dementia special report, Alabama frozen embryos ruling, applications for Sadler Scholars, health equity proposals
February 29, 2024
Facing Dementia: Clarifying End-of-Life Choices, Supporting Better Lives Special report reviews options, reveals inequities, and makes recommendations.
How should America’s aging society respond to the needs and concerns of people facing dementia, including patients, families, and caregivers? New therapies that may slow progression of this terminal condition have begun to emerge, but there is no intervention to prevent or reverse it. “Facing Dementia: Clarifying End-of-Life Choices, Supporting Better Lives” is the major product of a Hastings Center research project, codirected by Hastings senior research scholar Nancy Berlinger and President Emerita Mildred Z. Solomon. Berlinger and Solomon are editors of the special report, with Emily A. Largent of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Mara Buchbinder of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It offers recommendations for policymakers, research funders, and others concerning how to reduce the financial hardships and social isolation associated with this diagnosis. Read the special report.
Applications Open: Sadler Scholars 2024-25 Cohort Professional development for doctoral candidates from groups underrepresented in bioethics.
The Hastings Center invites applications for the 2024-25 cohort (remote) of Sadler Scholars from doctoral candidates who are from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in research fields and careers related to bioethics. Application deadline: March 29. Learn more and apply.
Responding to the Ethics of Alabama's Frozen Embryo Ruling Ravitsky discusses implications for IVF.
After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people, Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky spoke with the Los Angeles Times to discuss the ethics of IVF and what the controversial ruling means for clinics, families, and the more than one million embryos stored in freezers across the country. “Even if there’s technically the possibility of continuing to provide IVF, under this framework of ‘embryos are children’ . . . if you’re actually convinced that you’re treating children under the microscope, the risks are so huge that I don’t see how clinics will continue to function long-term.” Read the L.A. Times article. (Subscription required.)
Call for Health Justice Proposals Deadline March 4
Our collaborators at the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) Center for Health Justice conduct regular nationally representative polling to ask the public about health equity issues. Researchers are invited to apply for access to the polling data so they can pursue their own research for evidence-based solutions to achieve health equity. Learn more and apply here.
Upcoming Events
AI in Health. Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky will speak about AI in health at the Lake Nona symposium. February 28 - March 1.
In Science We Trust? Hastings Center-Knight Science Journalism Program webinar. March 5, register here.
Imagining Socially Just Policy Narratives About Dementia, a talk by Hastings Center senior research scholar Nancy Berlinger. University of Utah, Salt Lake City. March 6.
When Persons Facing Dementia Choose to Hasten Death: America's Ethical, Legal, Medical, and Social Landscape, a talk by Hastings Center senior research scholar Nancy Berlinger, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, March 8.
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